PowerColor SCS3 Radeon HD 5750 (passive) - cooling advice needed

I just bought a PowerColor Radeon HD 5750 with the passive SCS3 cooler yesterday. Very nice card and very, very nice gaming. Last time I gamed was 5-6 years ago and I see a lot has happened since.

The problem

My girlfriend was playing Sims 3 and suddenly the screen became black. I thought it could be a heat problem, but we rebooted and she continued playing with no more problems.

Afterwards I tried to play Modern Warfare 2, which seems to be pretty graphics intensive. After about an hour, the screen became black.

I rebooted and checked CPU temperature in BIOS (running a 5050e+ with a passive Thermalright HR-01 PLUS). They were fine somewhat above 40 degrees celcius.

I downloaded and ran FurMark 1.8.0 and noticed, that the GPU temperature would rise to about 105 degrees in 10 minutes time and cause the screen to go black.

Hence I conclude that I need to do something about the airflow in the case.

The system

I have a ThermalTake DH-103 (ATX) media center case with two 120mm fans (1 in, 1 out) running with 12v. I cannot fit anymore fans into the case.

The CPU cooler is fanless, but I don't think putting a fan on it will make better airflow.

I have a Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H motherboard and I need, as a minimum, to have a Hauppauge HVR-2200 TV-tuner and the ATI card installed. Currently an aditional SoundBlaster X-FI is installed.

The Hauppauge HVR-2200 low-profile TV tuner is placed in a PCI-E x1 slot right next to the GFX, but not on the "cooler" side of it - on the back side. Should I try to find another slot to make better airflow around the memory on the GFX?

Should I open the unused ports in the back of the case to allow the hot air around the GFX to get out that way or would it spoil the airflow?

What case have you got??
You should try get the best airflow you can by getting the intake and exhaust correctly.
Also try and get your cable management to look tidy so the air blowing in is better.
also does your side panel got a mountable fan slot? if so try putting a fan on the side panel and it should help cool your 5750.

Putting fans on fanless cards defeats the purpose of going fanless in an HTPC.

To the OP, see if you can get better flowing 120mm fans that still maintain a low noise. I want to say it's arctic cooling that recently released a series of high performance, but quiet fans. I can't remember for sure tho.

And then yes, remove all of your slot covers.

If it comes down to absolutely have to add a fan somewhere, you could try an Antec Spot Cool

I just noticed that my GPU temp doesn't rise much above 80 degress celcius within the first 15-20 minutes of playing Modern Warfare 2. Perhaps it's not the GPU, but the VRAM? I will have to test it some more.

you can check your GPU temp with MSI afterburner or GPU-Z

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Yeah, but I want to check the VRAM temp.

The "backside" of the GFX is facing right towards a Hauppauge HVR-2200 dual TV-tuner card and I can imagine, that this card helps heating up the RAM on the GFX.

Perhaps I should take out my SoundBlaster PCI-E card and put the Hauppauge HVR-2200 in to that location instead, to make some room around the GFX.

Putting fans on fanless cards defeats the purpose of going fanless in an HTPC.

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Exactly. It's a HTPC and I bought this card to be able to play games while not suffering from noise. The HTPC is also the source of a hi-fi setup, so it's important that background noise is kept to a minimum (hence the passive CPU cooler too).

To the OP, see if you can get better flowing 120mm fans that still maintain a low noise. I want to say it's arctic cooling that recently released a series of high performance, but quiet fans. I can't remember for sure tho.

Click to expand...

I've already changed the front intake fan from 5V to 12V and it improves the temperature a little. Both are the standard ThermalTake fans supposed to spin at 1300rpm (when supplied with 12v i guess).